Winter, July 2013

Shortly after I moved into my townhouse in January, the gardener paid me a visit. He said the depth of winter would be the time to do a major cutback of the front and back garden, which was pretty overgrown.

Pictures here are from when I moved in. Pretty much all of the plants in the back are supposed to be shrubs - the one in the clothesline is a topiary - the kind that are supposed to be cut into shapes like globes or ducks.

 

In the front garden, this is a really lovely rosebush that attacked every person who tried to get out of their car when it was in my parking spot (which Aussies call the car park), so their other choice was to squeeze up next to the overgrown hedge on the opposite side.

And then you'd have to squeeze past the hedge to get into the house. Super fun with suitcases, late at night, in the rain, after international travel.

This weekend at Joel's church, the priest preached on the scripture where the friend knocks and knocks until the homeowner gets out of bed and gets the guy what he wants. That has pretty much been me trying to get the the landlord to agree to have the garden cut back. Today, after three months of persistent knocking, the gardener came back and did the cut back. When I was showed him the back yard, I asked him what all the green stuff was that had cropped up over the last few months.

"Is it clover or something?"

"Oh. That's winter," he said.

Winter looks a bit different here.

And then he proceeded to trim EVERYTHING in about 90 minutes. Amazing what a man with a good set of tools and know-how can do. Fantastic. Most of it looks pretty tough at the moment, because after he left, I trimmed some more. I have a tendency to prefer a more dramatic cut back than most people are willing to do - ask my parents about how I handled their shrubs that were in front of the kitchen.... So I'm not posting evidence of my most recent effort on the web. But the car park is quite tidy looking, thanks to Michael the gardener. Wahoo!